The Future That Never Was

And thank God for that. Can you see this? It looks like Bladerunner except with less Hologram ladies.

What you see before you is unused concepts for the Lower Manhattan Expressway designed by visionary brutalist architect Paul Rudolph.

To celebrate what would be Rudolph’s 100th birthday, designers Lasse Lyhne-Hansen and Philipp Ohnesorge have used his old designs to re-render one of his most reviled creations.

The Lomex would have reimagined the expressway in such a fashion that the transportation link itself became irrelevant as it was dwarfed and consumed by the megastructure looming around it.

The expressway project was canceled in 1971 after fierce public backlash led by urban activist Jane Jacobs. Later in life Rudolph agreed that it probably wasn’t such a great idea.